Aletta Maria was die dogter van Burger Daniël Johannes van der Westhuizen en Johanna Carolina Catharina Jerling.
1941 Aletta worked at Royal
Air Force as Post Mistress Bloemfontein
(https://www.geni.com/people/Aletta-Maria-Smith/371412565110012191)
(https://www.geni.com/people/William-Brotherhood-Smith/371412174480005605)
Maud grew up in
Willowmore between Oudsthoorn and Knysna. She worked with her mother as a
nurse, Aunty Em her sister joined the business and helped with making hats.
Maud never liked the
names Aletta Maria, pronounced in those days as "Mariiya" not
"Mareea". She wanted to be known as Maud. In 1917 she was pledged to
marry George Baker, a British serviceman from the Cape who had asked the family
for her hand in marriage. George Baker used to call her Maud. Maud lived in
Cape Town during the first world War 1914 to 1918. It is thought that George
Baker was posted overseas and was killed in the first world war in 1917. This
may have happend in France and it could have been the Somme.
Maud met William
Brotherhood Smith on Robben Island. Maud was training as a nurse and moved to
nursing in the Mental Health Service on Robben Island in order to receive
better pay. Here she met William Smith who was employed as the Store Keeper for
the specialist hospital after the first world war.
When conversations were
held between Maud and one of her daughters, she spoke of her mother who was the
best dressmaker in Cape Town. She operated a dressmaking business sewing
designer ballgowns for the Jewish upper class community in Cape Town, Maud
recalled that she and her sister Emmie, used to play with the children of her
mother's customers whilst her mother worked on the gowns. (https://www.geni.com/people/Aletta-Maria-Smith/371412565110012191)
Kinders:
i. Beatrice Maud SMITH, geb.
05/08/1918 x Dreyer
i. Joyce Victoria SMITH, geb. 22/05/1920, Robben Island
i. Yvonne Sybil SMITH, geb.
30/05/1922, Port Alfred, Bathurst x Williamson
i. Millicent (Milly) SMITH
